News & Views

Iranian parliament wants to raise voting age to 18

TEHRAN, Aug 13 (AFP) - Iran's parliament wants to raise the national voting age from 16 to 18 in the latest struggle between the conservative parliament and reformist President Mohammed Khatami.

The conservative-dominated parliament "is now looking at revising electoral law with the intent of raising the voting age to 18," an official said.

Sixteen-year-olds "don't have enough political culture" said another, referring to the youth vote that was decisive in the surprise victory of the moderate Khatami in last year's presidential election.

"This will be a national, political drama," said Majid Anasari, a radical MP close to Khatami and head of parliament's radical-moderate minority coalition.

"I hope the drama will not take place because as a deputy I would be ashamed," he said, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.

The Islamic republic's constitution fixes the voting age at 16, and the move to raise it comes just before two important upcoming Iranian elections.

Moderate Interior Minister Abdol-vahed Mussavi-Lari, a close ally of Khatami, said last week that Iran would conduct its first-ever elections for the so- called "Islamic councils."

The local councils, designed to give voters greater participation in political power and more authority over their local areas, are provided for in the constitution but have never been created.

The second election, scheduled for October, is for the Assembly of Experts, the political and religious body which has the authority to designate and remove the spiritual guide of the Islamic Republic.

The assembly is the constitutional guardian of the principle of "Velayat-i- Faqeh," which underlines the political authority of the spiritual leader and was established by Ayatollah Khomeini after he headed the 1979 Islamic revolution.

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